No, I don't drink. Yes, I drink sometimes, hey, look, funny face - I don't drink A.L.C.O.H.O.L. Okay, that's it, who do I have to frag to get a soda in this place? Hey, don't look at me like that, I'm not going to shoot you. Put the shotgun down, easy John Wayne. If I was going to shoot you you'd be dead already. Pow.
You notice a sudden ripple of silence in the otherwise effusive drunkards, dissolutes and revellers clustering up the bar, the sea of patrons parting like the Red Sea before a seven foot gleaming steel amazon of a Moses. This is going to be good.
You guys sell burgers? Sweet. Triple cheese, extra relish, double tomato, three patties, all the sauces, grill the chicken till it looks like a bombsight and get liberal with the onion rings. There better be no real meat in that maple bacon or I'm going to hell. Yeah, no spit in it either. You asshole, I'm a fracking transhuman death machine, I will spectroscope the crap out of that burger and if I find one particle of your DNA in it you can say auf Wiedersehen to your johnson, your family's johnsons, your sister's johnson and your dog's. Damn right you're going to apologise. Poser.
A profanely tattooed racer ejects himself from his before two thirds of a ton of plasteel and nanopolymer flop into his lap. The much-maligned stool buckles with protest, arcing like a bungee chord. You wonder if it's going to ping off and decapitate someone when she gets up.
I'm a hero of the frigging nomad war, damnit. I'm a regular Von Clausen, I save the universe for a frigging living, I get shot at by frigging libertonians cleaning up their scum problem without so much as a by-your-leave and nobody has the presence of mind to serve me some frigging tap water. I am a fricking walking hydraulic press with legs, and they sneer at me like I'm a dumbass because I won't drink alcohol like your average neo-fascist redneck gangbanger xeno tushwipe. Allah have mercy, I've got nanorobotic filters for lungs and I still got a cold in this place.She grimaces, aggressively sniffling.
This is going to be good.
THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's Shipping Unions, retired from a life of piracy.)